Page content

Spies and Scouts, Secret Writing, and Sympathetic Citizens

by Ed Crews

Drink and discretion mix badly when secrets of war are at stake. A British officer accepts a
glass from a bartender eager to extract intelligence for the patriot cause.
Interpreter Robin Reed is the officer, Bill Rose the colonial agent.

Nathan Hale's statue outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Thomas Knowlton's statue in Connecticut. Hale belonged to Knowlton's Rangers,
which were used by Washington for spying and special operations.

Despite objections from some of his own officers, Washington sent British spy Major John Andre to the
gallows in 1780.

Keith Dixon of the Joint Forces Staff
College.

Edward Lengel at the University of Virginia.

Methods of eighteenth-century tradecraft. In July 1777, British General
William Howe sent a message, top, rolled up and inserted in the quill of a
large feather, to General John Burgoyne. He would invade Pennsylvania, he
wrote, rather than meet up with Burgoyne in New York.

A simple method of
secret writing that the Americans never caught on to. An apparently
unexceptional letter from General Henry Clinton contained a secret message
hidden in plain sight.

When a mask, usually posted by separate mailing,
was placed over the letter, the self-contained section with the covert message
was revealed.

The intended message, in which Clinton regrets not
being able to persuade Howe to move up to New York instead of Pennsylvania: "Sr
W's move just at this time / the worst he could take."

From left, Mark Hutter, Ron Carnegie as General Cornawallis, and Ken Treese as General O'Hara in the Colonial Williamsburg electronic field trip In the General's
Secret Service.

From the Electronic Field Trip

In the General's Secret Service

, Edward Whitacre as Major
Andre, was hanged as a spy.

United states intelligence operatives
are engaged around the globe in the contest with terrorism. Others are focused
on postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. Covert activities have not been undertaken on
so grand a scale since World War II.

Some of these secret struggles have become public
knowledge. Television viewers and newspaper readers have details of the search
for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, unconnected dots before the September
11, 2001, attacks, the capture of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda leaders, and the
ambush and killing of Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay.

In the string of news images, one in particular is
rich in historical significance, a reminder that the American clandestine
tradition is more than two centuries old. During early fighting with the
Taliban, an official photograph showed American special operations soldiers
riding into battle on horseback. The picture revealed the austere military
environment in Afghanistan. It also provided a link to the secret side of the
Revolutionary War. America's first elite, clandestine unit—Knowlton's
Rangers—undertook missions for George Washington. The men photographed in
Afghanistan, as well as the Army Rangers, Special Forces, Delta Force, and army
intelligence, trace their origins to Knowlton's command.

Washington's Rangers are part of the larger story of intelligence
operations in the War for Independence. They spanned North America, the
Atlantic, Great Britain, and Europe. Engaged in the undercover war were such
revolutionaries as Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Washington.

These men, other American leaders, their British
opponents, and French allies understood that victory hinged on sound political
and military intelligence. To get it, they used espionage, counterespionage,
diplomatic sleight-of-hand, propaganda, scouting, partisan warfare, code
making, code breaking, sabotage, bribery, deception, and disinformation.

Beginning to end, secret activities shaped the
Revolution's course. British generals moved on Concord in 1775 because spies
told them munitions were there. Colonial agents informed the Americans of the
British plans to capture the arms and frustrated the effort. Through deception,
Washington fooled the British in 1781 into thinking a Franco-American assault
on New York was pending. While the British strengthened positions there and
waited for an attack that never came, Washington and the Marquis de Rochambeau
slipped away to Virginia, where they defeated Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.

The methods spies use have not changed much in two
centuries. Keith D. Dickson, professor of military studies at the Joint Forces
Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, says: "With the exception of technology,
there are no differences. Everything familiar to intelligence professionals
today was seen in the eighteenth century—double agents, secret writing, dead
drops, clandestine meetings, codes, and signals."

These techniques were used in the 1700s for the same
reasons they are today, Dickson said. Agents sought, and still seek, tactical
information—troop movements, enemy intentions, and battle plans—and such
strategic information as the goals and objectives of national leaders, their
plans and policy decisions. A former intelligence officer who recently returned
from military duty in Iraq as a colonel, Dickson uses Revolutionary War
examples to teach strategy and related subjects to American officers.

Dickson says that then, as now, much intelligence
came from nonsecret sources. "Both British and American forces depended heavily
on local sources of information to gain a better picture of the enemy. Although
we usually think of intelligence in terms of spies and espionage activities,
most information of value to military operations during the Revolution came
from what we now call open-source material: newspapers, rumors, gossip,
quizzing casual observers or passers-by." These days Central Intelligence
Agency analysts scan CNN and the New York Times for information.

In the 1700s, no
nation had highly structured, professional intelligence organizations
comparable to modern ones, according to Christopher Andrew's book Her
Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community. Spy agencies now are permanent, often large
bureaucracies. They employ well-trained career officers who collect or analyze
information. This institutionalized approach to secret operations began in the
late nineteenth century but did not take fully its current form until the
twentieth.

In the 1770s, intelligence work was more ad hoc.
Great Britain had a tradition of successful—but sporadic—intelligence work
beginning with the Tudors, but no permanent secret service. Even code breaking
was farmed out to contractors. Clandestine activity grew during crises, and all
but disappeared in peacetime. William Eden, undersecretary of state, oversaw
England's spy networks in Europe during the Revolution. His budget was large,
£115,900 in 1775. It reached £200,000 within three years. The sums hint at the
scope of Eden's system. They also reflect the British belief in the power of
bribery, used frequently and effectively, as in the case of Benedict Arnold.

The American revolutionaries had fewer funds and no
clandestine tradition, a severe disadvantage, according to Edward Lengel. He's
a military historian and associate editor of the Papers of George Washington at
the University of Virginia and has written a military biography, General
George Washington and the Birth of the American Republic, slated for publication in 2004 by Random House.

"The Americans won the war despite having an
intelligence service that was almost always markedly inferior to the British.
The British always had plenty of moles—loyalists by ideology or from pecuniary
motive—within and outside George Washington's headquarters. Washington had no
such advantage, being forced to rely for the most part on what sympathetic
civilians could observe from outside the British camps."

The Continental Congress created groups to pursue
covert enterprises. The Secret Committee, for instance, sought military
information and aid. The Committee of Correspondence engaged in secret
activities abroad. The Committee on Spies dealt with counterintelligence. They
attracted such congressional talents as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and
Benjamin Harrison.

But the most difficult and sustained efforts were made
by the Continental leaders closest to the military and diplomatic action. In
1997, the Central Intelligence Agency honored three patriots as the Founding
Fathers of American intelligence: Franklin for covert action, Jay for
counterintelligence, and Washington for acquisition of foreign intelligence.

Of the three, Franklin had the most experience in foreign intrigue. He
had represented Georgia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania in London before the
war. There he apparently learned much. Congress acknowledged Franklin's wisdom
and experience when it sent him to France in 1776. He worked in Paris to secure
military aid, recognition of the American cause, and an alliance.

His diplomacy was overt and covert. He waged a public
relations campaign, secured secret aid, played a role in privateering
expeditions, and churned out effective and inflammatory propaganda. One coup
involved distributing bogus newspaper reports of outrages committed by
England's Indian allies on the frontier. Opposition members in Parliament were
duped and used the material to attack the government.

Franklin's success can be measured partially by the
anxiety his mission created in England. The British ambassador to Paris called
him a "veteran of mischief." Franklin knew he was the object of "violent
curiosities." He did all he could to keep the enemy on edge while he parried
with spies curious about him.

Dickson says, "Franklin had a network of agents and
friends in France who provided him excellent information on British naval force
movements. On the other hand, Franklin's secretary in Paris, Edward Bancroft,
was a British agent. He sent vital information written on paper in invisible
ink sealed in little bottles dropped in a location for pickup by the British
spymaster Paul Wentworth, who ran a very effective espionage network in Paris
targeting American-French activities. Luckily for America, George III
discounted most of what Bancroft provided. Franklin suspected a compromise and
often sent false information out to trap the mole, but Bancroft was never
discovered. Not until after his death was he discovered to be a traitor."

The French also spied on Franklin, tracking his
movements as well as the movements of the British agents tracking him. In late
eighteenth-century France, the government kept a sharp eye on many
people—Frenchmen as well as foreigners. French agents collected diplomatic
information, street gossip, and pillow talk. As a saying of the time put it: "When
two Parisians talk, a third listens."

Franklin's finest achievement in duplicity came in
the wake of the American victory at Saratoga. The British hoped the outcome
might provide an avenue for reconciliation. The French feared it would.
Franklin approached the British, pretending to open a dialog. The French found
out—as Franklin anticipated—and rushed into an alliance with America, hoping to
forestall a settlement.

Jay's wartime experience in secret service was less
glamorous. There are few jobs in intelligence more tedious, anxious, or
disheartening than catching spies. Jay brought to the work intellect, energy,
and patriotic spirit. From summer 1776 to winter 1777, he oversaw the
activities of a New York legislative committee charged with "detecting and
defeating conspiracies." The conspiracies largely were British attempts to use
Tories to control New York City. Jay's committee made arrests, conducted
trials, and used agents to gather information. After the war, Jay became chief
justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He also helped argue the
case for approval of the federal Constitution by the states as co-author of The
Federalist Papers with James Madison
and Alexander Hamilton. In one piece, Jay argued that the executive branch
needed the authority to conduct intelligence operations.

Washington's intelligence performance had the
greatest immediate impact on Continental Army operations. Although he gained
military experience in the French and Indian War, nothing had prepared him to
be a spymaster, but Lengel says Washington was deeply interested in secret
activities, and enjoyed dealing with agents.

"Washington was a devoted amateur," Lengel said. "He
valued intelligence and used it reasonably effectively. He was also
discriminating and dismissed bad intelligence more often than not. But he was
still an amateur, and no match for British professionals."

Washington used scouts extensively, showed a flair
for disinformation and deception, and looked for turncoats in the enemy ranks.

Lengel said Washington was not above seeking traitors
in the British army, especially Hessian officers, despite his moral outrage
over Arnold's defection; he was just less successful.

Washington's greatest intelligence failure involved
Nathan Hale. Desperate for information in September 1776 about developments
behind British lines, Washington sent Hale through them as a spy. Hale had no
tradecraft and a tissue-thin cover. A manuscript found in 2003 at the Library
of Congress revealed that a loyalist agent easily duped Hale into revealing his
mission. Hale's arrest and execution followed quickly.

"He's still a hero," James Hutson, chief of the
library's manuscript division, said late last year to reporters. "He was a
brave guy who volunteered for a mission that no one else wanted to take. He was
just not well-trained and didn't know quite what to do."

The CIA displays a statue of Hale at its Langley,
Virginia, headquarters.

Washington had espionage and counterespionage
achievements. He ran agents and networks in Philadelphia and New York. He
uncovered the treachery of Benjamin Church, Continental Army medical chief, who
served as a British spy. In 1776, Washington's spy John Honeyman accurately
described the laxity of Hessian troops in Trenton, New Jersey, then returned and
persuaded the Hessians that the Americans would not attack. The result was
Washington's victory after crossing the Delaware River at night.

The capture of the British spy Major John Andre
foiled Benedict Arnold's plot to betray West Point. Condemned to death, Andre
went bravely to the gallows. Washington rejected pleas for clemency—some from
his own officers—but not without regret.

Washington's understanding of the need for sound
military intelligence is reflected in a letter he wrote to a confidant in 1777.
His words still have a sense of immediacy and relevancy:

The necessity of
procuring good Intelligence is apparent & need not be further urged—All
that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as
possible. For upon Secrecy, Success depends in Most Enterprises of the kind,
and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned &
promising a favorable issue.

"The Cupid Code" is taken from Colonial Williamsburg's Electronic Field Trip In the General's Secret Service, which will be broadcast during the 2004 - 2005 Electronic Field Trip series. For more information on registering your classroom for the live broadcast and interactive activities of this exciting interactive educational resource, visit Electronic Field Trips.

Ed Crews contributed to
the spring 2004 journal a story on colonial roads. Crews says readers
interested in Revolutionary intelligence operations might review the relevant
chapters in Spying for America: The
Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence, by Nathan Miller, as well as Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence,
Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA, by G.
J. A. O'Toole.